


Safe Places

by taelynhawker



Category: The Originals (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, F/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 07:08:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3125486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taelynhawker/pseuds/taelynhawker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein Gia saves Elijah from Esther when she's the only one to notice he's gone missing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safe Places

He woke to his mother’s face- her newest face- peering up into his own. As if he weren’t chained and on his knees. This ruse of being below him, why did she do it? He found it disturbing, as he found her constant touches disconcerting. All of it throwing him off, making it harder to keep his wits about him.

"What?" he rasped out, realizing she was asking him something.

"I said, dear boy, who is Gia?”

He jerked away from her, awake now, eyes wide. It was the dream he’d been having, he remembered. Gia finding him here, furious and ungentle in her attempts to free him, impatient. There had been music playing somewhere. He missed music, he thought, mind wandering. The smell of smoke in his nose-

He tightened his jaw, shaking his head, and kept his mouth stubbornly closed. He would not drag another innocent person into this, to be used as threat or bait. Gia was safe, safer that he could keep her at the moment, and he would make sure she stayed that way.

"Have you grown so fickle? You love Hayley.” She sounded so certain and yet so unsure at the same time and he took great pleasure in that. “Don’t worry, dear, I’ll find out. All this really means is another precious creature for you to pull apart. Like the monster you are,” she murmured, kissing his forehead.

He watched his mother leave him, but was unsure if she had really left. Or that she had been there at all. Few things felt real anymore. Or maybe it was that too many things felt real. He hung his head, eyes closing. His entire body ached and he was so very hungry. How many days had she had him here? It felt as if years had passed. Centuries. Lifetimes.

Eyes open or closed, it didn’t stop him from seeing exactly what his mother wanted him to see. Be it the nightmares behind the red door… or the dreams of being freed. First by Hayley. Followed by Katerina who was sometimes Tatia and also Elena, as if his mind could not sort the three. And then Niklaus. Marcellus. Now Gia. But it had been the most real, Gia’s attempt to free him. After the vision of the doppelgängers he had stopped believing. Even Niklaus and Marcel he doubted. But then it had been Gia and for some reason that had seemed the most believable.

"I thought she’d never leave. Do you know how long I’ve been watching this place? One of them is always here.”

His eyes snapped open at that voice, Gia’s voice, and he stared, wary and confused. He opened his mouth to speak and then shut it again, lifting his head proudly. His mother would not break him with this. He couldn’t keep her out of his mind if she chose to let herself in, but he would not fall for her tricks. No more.

"Did she hex you silent or something? I thought we made progress on the small talk thing." Her teasing was belied by her obvious fear.

She circled around him and Elijah went very stiff despite that it hurt, disliking not being able to see her and what she was up to. He caught her out of the corner of his eye as she snatched the doll and he turned his head further, watching as she tossed it from hand to hand and then finally dropping it- along with a small bottle of something he did not recognize- and crushing both beneath worn black boots. Magic jolted across the chains and he grunted with the pain. That was new. It hadn’t happened the other times he’d imagined being freed.

Gia was cursing under her breath, fangs out, eyes dark, she shook her head and her face returned back to normal.

"That was uncomfortable, that kid wasn't lying about the kick back. And shit, she probably felt that too, I wasn't thinking...” She muttered, pulling the chains out of the wall, chunks of the actual wall coming with them.

Elijah let out a pained noise as his arms dropped, and another as she tore the chains again, closer to the actual manacles around his wrists. Smart girl, he wouldn’t be able to move with the length of chain and wall dragging behind him. She ducked down beside him and pulled his arm over her shoulders.

"Can you walk?" She asked, standing and dragging him to his feet with her.

He was unsteady and weak but with her help he thought he could manage. And like that he realized he had fallen for it again, that he believed this was happening.

"How far will you let me get this time, mother?" he murmured.

Gia, who had been eyeing the exit gave him a confused look but started them moving none the less. He walked with her, what did it matter? He would get as far as he got and then he would wake to his chains. At least he might imagine a moment of being free. He moved with her as best he could given the pain of the magic his mother had used to weaken him, the starvation, and the mental duress, but he knew Gia bore the brunt his weight

"How did you find me?" he asked, as they cleared the entrance to the mausoleum. The fresh air struck him and he breathed it in deeply.

Gia kept them moving, eyes always watching and careful. “Let me get you out of here. You can quiz me later.”

Of course. She couldn’t explain because she hadn’t found him. No one was going to find him, no one knew he was gone. He would remain here, until the memories of what he’d done made him mad enough to agree to his mother’s demands. She would break him, no matter that he had sworn she would not.

"Hey, hey, Elijah? No, come on, keep moving," Gia’s voice held a soft edge of hysteria and he forced his eyes open, meeting hers, as her hands cupped his face. "You have to keep moving. We need to leave before they find us. So come on." She dragged at him and he realized he had slumped down, legs no longer holding him up. "Elijah, move your ass, come on."

He managed to rise to his feet, leaning ever more heavily on her. His persistent dream rescuer. How amusing and ironic it would be visions of the girl he’d first refused to have anything to do with that would get him the furthest from his torture. He let her lead him, but the further they got from the mausoleum the worse he felt, drained and weak, vision fading in and out. He slumped down to the ground as they stopped for a moment. She was speaking angrily at him, but his ears no longer made sense of the words. He closed his eyes, he knew no more.

And woke again, expecting chains, hearing raised voices instead, with the warmth and comfort of a bed beneath him. He laughed quietly at himself. He was dreaming himself a bed. He lifted his head and took in the apartment, one he had never seen before. Strange. All his other visions had been events, places, people, he’d actually known in his long life. A door slammed and he jerked, sitting up as best he could. There was a blood bag on the side table and he grasped it, tearing into it. He drank neatly, but greedily, his eyes on the door. He needed some strength to face whatever would come from beyond it.

Which was, he saw as the door opened, Gia.

"Where are we?" he demanded, and ignored the unimpressed look she gave him.

"Good to see you’re feeling more like yourself," she muttered, and held out another blood bag, which he took.

He ignored her comment, trying and failing to stand from the bed. He settled back on it instead, drinking the second bag. “Where are we?” he asked again.

"My place," she finally answered, her eyes moving over him. "Marcel wanted to take you back to your compound or his own place, but I wouldn’t let him. I’m pretty sure he’s going to go get your brother and come back. But for now, I think you should probably just rest. And since no one knows who I am or where I live, this is probably safer than anywhere else."

He was uncertain if he should trust any of this. He had never made it this far in any of his visions of escape. And he’d never been here before. But what if it was all an elaborate hoax to break him further? He watched her warily as she flopped down on the edge of the bed and offered him a third blood bag. He hadn’t even realized he’d finished the second.

"Would you stop looking at me like that?" she demanded.

He raised his head a bit, thrown by the demand, by her tone. ”And how am I looking at you?”

"Like you don’t trust me," she said, sounding genuinely annoyed with him.

"You’ll have to forgive me. I’ve been… rescued… several times now. None quite this successfully, but I fear trusting it to be true is beyond me at the moment."

Her eyes widened in understanding and he held her gaze for a long moment before looking away and finishing the third bag, placing all of them on the side table. He reached up to wipe at his mouth and then stopped. It was an old habit, to clean himself up, to wipe it away. He swallowed thickly and stood, needing to do something other than just sit there. She stood with him as if she expected him to fall. He supposed he’d fallen more than once on the way here.

"Look, I have no way of proving that I’m, real, or whatever. But I am. You’re out, okay? And If you want to go to your brother, or, or to Hayley, you should go. I’m not forcing you to stay here. But no one knows you’re here except Marcel and no one even knows who I am, which means this place is a pretty safe place for you. So maybe you should just lay down and rest for a while, Elijah.” He jerked slightly as she wrapped her fingers around his forearm. “You look awful, I had to carry you most of the way here until Marcel finally showed up to help. She used… a lot of magic to subdue you. I’m not even sure it’s all gone. I had to go back, there was a jar of your blood, I missed it when I was breaking the chains, but I- it doesn’t matter- I went back and got it so you should be safe now but you should rest while you can.”

Elijah turned towards her, putting his hand over hers on his arm. His brother, Hayley, Marcel, none of them had come for him. Why had she? Why risk her life, freeing him not just from his mother’s chains but her blood magic as well?

“You found me,” he said, the request for an explanation obvious.

“I did, yeah,” she sighed, letting him go to run her hands through her hair. “I had a feeling, I followed it. Street musicians are everywhere and we see a lot. So I found you, I checked the place out, got the advice of a pretty discreet witch, and I got you out. I didn't tell anyone because I didn't have time and it seemed like a situation where the fewer people knew the better. So yeah, I found you, I got you. I had to go back once I realized the further I took you the weaker you got because obviously there was some kind of magic still on you or in your system.”

It sounded like the kind of thing his mother would do. Use his blood. Not just to bind him in chains but to keep him from leaving. Effective. Thorough. And blood was her favorite mystical ingredient.

He made his way to the window, pulling the ragged curtain back with a single finger and looking out. He supposed he was freed then. It was all too elaborate, it didn’t match with the previous escape visions at all.

“Why?” he asked, turning to face her again, eyes slightly narrowed. He recalled an earlier conversation with her, when she had asked him why.

“Why wouldn’t I? You’re one of us, you’re supposed to be teaching me. You risked everything for those wolves, and then- of course I wasn’t going to just ignore it when you went missing.” He could see that she wanted to say more but didn’t. “You’re making me nervous, would you just lay down, please? Or something? Anything? You know what you look like right now, right? Shower at least.”

He opened his mouth to answer her and then paused, giving it thought. “A shower would be appreciated.”

“Okay, so, good. You go shower, I’ve got a pair of sweats I think will fit you. They’re an old roommate’s but they’re clean. So just.”

She reached out to him but didn’t actually touch and he turned on his heel and followed her the short distance to the very small bathroom. This apartment wasn’t much but it was very… her. It brought a slight smile to his lips to see it. It also made him believe. He’d been rescued, galling as it was to admit he’d needed rescuing. She had managed to do it. This little problem of Marcel's, the responsibility he'd tried to push onto Elijah. There was an unfamiliar sort of gratitude warming his chest at the moment. 

"Gia," he said quietly, and she froze, turning back to look at him. "I should say thank you. Thank you. For freeing me." He grasped her elbow gently and leaned in to kiss her cheek, letting his lips linger. 

When he pulled away her eyes were closed and she was holding onto his shirt. They stayed that way for a long, quiet moment, and he let his forehead rest against hers as a hand came up to cup her cheek. His thumb ran gently over her cheek, near the corner of her mouth. That tension that they'd shared that day, when he'd been sparring with her, he could feel it again now. Building. It was not the time. He knew himself well enough to know that should he throw caution to the wind and act on this right now, in this moment, it would end very badly. He should, at the very least, clean himself, give himself the benefit of a moment to assess his mind set. 

"Shower," she said finally, pulling away, smoothing a hand down his chest. "I'll be here when you get out."

Elijah found his lip curling up into a hesitant smile. He nodded and turned away finally, letting her go. Perhaps once he'd cleaned himself up, once he'd assessed the damage. 

Perhaps.


End file.
